Rad Hourani's Adolescence Smelled Like Sperm & Baby Powder

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Each year Six Scents Parfum chooses six designers to create their own unisex scents with top perfumers from Givaudan. This years line-up featured Alexis Mabille, Mary Katrantzou (who just last week was awarded the prestigious Swiss textile award for 2010), menswear designer Juun J, Rad Hourani, N.Hoolywood and Ohne Titel, whose bottled scents will be accompanied by a DVD of short films by Alia Raza, written by Tavi Gevinson, featuring Julia Restoin Roitfeld and produced by Derek Blasberg.

All of which means that Friday's night's celebration of the series attracted a long list of fashionistas. The prompt this year was childhood or adolescent memories of scents, which perhaps explains the contracting of an adolescent — Tavi — to write the short film's screenplay.

Meanwhile, for Hourani, it meant mixing scents of birth and sex. "I wanted something transformable, representing life from birth to death. The top note is baby powder mixed with the smell of sperm, but a sperm that is not necessarily vulgar or filthy. It's more a smell you can't put your finger on...Christopher [the perfumer] went as close to the sperm smell as possible and made it really elegant and beautiful."

If you can get the description out of your head, the scent is actually quite sensual and wearable. On the other end of the spectrum, Katrantzou describes the process as "soul searching"; the questionaire first conjured thoughts of burnt matches, lipstick and shampooed hair.

You can pre-order your favorite designer's scent at Colette now — and a portion of the sales proceeds benefit War Child International, so not only are you getting a piece of your favorite cool designer for under $150, it's for a good cause.